This invention relates to the distribution of financial data. It is particularly concerned with the vocalisation of trading data such as price data as produced, for example, from an electronic trading system.
Electronic trading systems for trading instruments such as financial instruments, commodities and other fungibles are well known. An example of such a system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,055. In this system, available prices in the market are distributed to trader terminals on the basis of the ability of the traders' trading floor to deal those prices. If the trading floor has not extended sufficient credit to a counterparty institution submitting a quote then that quote will not be displayed to traders on that floor. The system is anonymous in that the identity of parties to a trade is not given up until the trade has been completed.
The system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,055 is widely used to trade foreign exchange spot currency (FX Spot). The FX Spot market is very volatile and can move extremely quickly. Traders in major institutions may specialise in a single currency pair. Such as US$:Euro, but many traders will trade several currency pairs simultaneously. This requires the traders to keep track of deals being done by other parties, and the quotes input into the market in each of the currency pairs. This demands extreme concentration on behalf of the trader.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,806,050 assigned to EBS Dealing Resources, Inc., discloses a system in which key market data is vocalised to the trader. As well as seeing prices and done deals displayed on their screens, traders can hear trading information as it occurs. Thus, the price at which a trade has been dealt is announced to the trader over a loudspeaker at their terminal. Rather than announce the whole price including the big figure, that is the most significant digit or digits, the system follows market practice and just announces the pips, which are usually the two least significant digits and are those which are of interest to the traders. A range of other market related information may also be vocalised to the trader.
The system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,806,050 has met with commercial success as it mimicked the behaviour of voice brokers through whom traders traded before the advent of electronic trading systems. It therefore gave them a degree of comfort with operating in an otherwise unfamiliar environment. It also helped them to keep track of movements across several currency pairs.
The system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,806,050 assigns a different voice to each currency pair, up to a limit of, say, three or four, although there is no limit to the number of voices that can be used. Each voice selected is distinctive in terms of pitch and accent to assist the trader in following the movement in each currency.
An anonymous trading system operating in a very liquid market can perform tens of thousands of deals a day. These traders generate a vast amount of market data which is extremely valuable as it shows banks and other institutions the true position of the markets. This market data is commonly sold to subscribing institutions and customers and is an important source of income from trading system operators. Use of the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,806,050 was discontinued when it was found that traders were passing market price data vocalised by the trading system to their clients. Traders would place a telephone handset next to the speaker through which the prices were vocalised. At the other end of the telephone line, the prices would be broadcast over a loudspeaker to the trader's customer. Clearly this resulted in a loss of revenue to the system operator and, as a result, the vocalisation of trading data was discontinued.
It is recognised that the vocalisation of trading data is very useful to traders and it is desirable that it should be continued. However, there exists the problem of how to prevent traders from passing this data to their customers illicitly.